The desire to achieve a reduction in exclusions is plainly to be welcomed, but councils can’t just impose a fining system – schools would have to sign up to it, explains Russell Holland Gloucestershire County Council has recently made headlines for proposing to “fine” schools £5,000 for permanently excluding a child. The reality is that…

As the debate on school exclusions becomes increasingly polarised, we brought together two people with opposing views to see where there might be common ground. Mark Lehain, director of campaigning group Parents and Teachers for Excellence, chatted with Jules Daulby, director of education for literacy charity Driver Youth Trust. Qu: Are there too many or…

How can the education committee claim the current level of school exclusions is too high, when no one even knows what the correct level should be, argues John Blake Every child in England is entitled to an education. Thus, this week’s report from the parliamentary education committee, on the experiences of students removed from mainstream schools as…

Fifteen years ago I met a vicar in a bar in Oxford who had spent 20 years working in prisons with violent male offenders. He told me that the youngest ones only had two shots at turning their lives around. “Either they find Jesus, or their girlfriend gets pregnant and they suddenly get the preciousness…

Even with an inclusive approach and a clear behaviour policy, permanent exclusion is sometimes necessary to protect staff or students, says Jacqueline Valin Pupil exclusions are finally on the political radar, and it’s heartening to see the issue being publicly examined. With permanent and fixed-term exclusion rates on the rise, the question of when, or…

Excluded pupils should be protected by a “bill of rights” that would allow proper scrutiny of their school’s decision to kick them out, the influential chair of the education select committee has said. Robert Halfon is concerned about the lack of protection for pupils and their parents in situations where schools may have wrongly excluded…

The government recently announced they will be collecting data on pregnant pupils transferred from mainstream to alternative schools from next September. What they do with this data is crucial. New research from Action for Children shows that young people who have become parents by the age of 25 are less likely to have moved into…

The quality of alternative provision for excluded pupils varies wildly across the country, and even between adjacent authorities, exclusive data obtained by Schools Week reveals. In fact, unequal funding structures between councils mean pupils can end up £4,000 worse off than those from neighbouring regions. The data shows that 86 per cent of councils have…

Explanations for why pupils are moved into alternative provision are to be centrally collected for the first time under changes coming into effect next year. The move will help government understand if alternative provision is used appropriately by mainstream schools. From January 2018, councils will have to collect additional data about pupils in PRUs and…

Guidance on pupil exclusions originally published in December 2014 and set for implementation in January 2015 was pulled from the government webpage in February on the grounds of “issues with process” – but has yet to be replaced 23 months later. The government has now been urged to develop new guidance handing schools greater statutory…